Many devoted animal lovers are baffled by a bad behavior in their companion animal. These field-tested techniques for understanding and improving such behaviors look both at the animal and at their human companion. The reason? Animals can mirror the people they live with physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually -- in both positive and negative ways. The companion animal of a human with a serious illness or dysfunctional behavior may take the same on in an effort to help. But animals are also active participants in their own lives and may be offering less mirroring and more teaching by their behavior. Marta Williams, informed by her own decades of work and her interviews with veterinarians, animal behavior specialists, and trainers, teaches readers to actively communicate with their animal companions -- through mirroring, empathy, psychodrama, and other techniques. Each chapter includes real world examples and hands-on activities and exercises that heal both animal and human.

EXCERPT

Introduction

When I was just starting out in the world of living with dogs, I took my seven-month-old female puppy named Brydie, who was part Border collie, part Dalmatian mix — a combination I now know was just asking for trouble — to a beginning dog-obedience class. The class was held outside in a weed-strewn, concrete lot in the middle of the small town where I lived. The woman who taught the class was one of those classic dog people — whistle around her neck, leathery skin, hair bleached and dried to straw by the sun and wind. Pretty much within the first five minutes of class, Brydie and I had a training-crisis meltdown. I had Brydie on a leash, and a woman in the class came up to us with her dog to visit. My erstwhile sweet and loving baby girl turned into The Alien: huge fangs appeared out of nowhere, a hideous scream issued from the depth of her chest, and she lunged with full force at the woman’s dog. For the record, I can’t recall anything about the woman or her dog, though I’m sure I would have remembered if her dog had been in any way aggressive. I have so little recall because I was in a complete state of shock. What I do remember is hearing the thin, cheery, Barbara Woodhouse–like voice of the trainer calling out something like, “Oh, don’t worry — that’s perfectly normal.” I was incredulous at the idea that this behavior was normal. Then as I stood there nonplussed, Brydie did it again: lunged with all her weight, saliva flying and eyes ablaze. I thought to myself, “If this is normal, I want nothing to do with it.” I was so freaked out I just left the class. Today, I couldn’t tell you if the trainer tried to stop me or reason with me or even if I got my money back. I was in deep distress.

I had adopted Brydie from the shelter just three months earlier, and I had already somewhat realized that I was now the owner of a whirling dervish of a dog with the obsessive-compulsive tendencies of a Border collie — -i.Are you going to throw that ball, are you? Okay, I will just wait here all day until you throw that ball. But when are you going to throw that ball? — and the emotional profile of a Dalmatian. Which is to say, she was a diva: the world revolved around her and her alone. I could equally well have named her Diva, but ultimately Brydie was the perfect name: it was short for Bridget Mary, which gave her two names, befitting the somewhat contradictory personality she revealed herself to be. One name fit the times she was a calm and sweet Bridget, and the other fit the times she was a crazed, attacking Mary. But after she lit into that dog in the training session, I panicked and made a faulty assumption: I decided she was a bad dog whom I would need to keep away from other dogs. I didn’t know that much about dogs at the time and had never had a really difficult dog, so perhaps I could be excused somewhat for making this error in judgment. Yet in so doing I led Brydie and myself down the rabbit hole.

It was really scary taking her for a walk after that. I lived in an area with a lot of dogs. We had one trail where everyone walked their dogs, and when I walked Brydie on it, I felt I had to call out and warn people (who didn’t already know) that I had a crazed and vicious dog, and they should not let their dog come up and say hi. To her credit, Brydie would be fine on the leash walking around other dogs until that precise moment when some unsuspecting dog got just within her lunge-reach, at which point Brydie would explode outward. Walking your dog is supposed to be fun and relaxing; walking Brydie, unless there was no one else on the dog path, was hardly that.

This went on for about six months. I gave up on dog classes, feeling that I was on my own with no options. Then one day another dog walker, seeing how pathetic Brydie and I were, made a fateful comment: “You know, your dog is just feeding off of your thoughts and your reactions. You can change that behavior.” That was the day the world shifted for Brydie and me. I took that statement to heart and set about finding the way to fix the problem that apparently I had somehow created.

I discovered that when I let someone else take Brydie’s leash — someone who was confident and calm, with lots of dog experience — and walk her up to another dog, Brydie would be fine. She could be a little growly with raised back hair at first, but fairly quickly she started playing. Who knew? My Alien Dog was actually more of a life-of-the-party girl. To fix the situation, when I walked her and we approached another dog on-leash, I closed my eyes, turned the other way, breathed deeply, and focused on pleasant thoughts. Holding the leash, I’d say, “Brydie, be nice.” Then after a few seconds, I would chance a peek to see if the other dog was still standing. Almost invariably, Brydie would be down in a doggie bow to her new friend or hopping around and cajoling the dog to play.

I finally came to see that when I was scared, Brydie got scared; she was reading my body language, my feelings, and my thoughts, and acting accordingly. When she was with someone calm and unperturbed, she was a different dog. Right about the time this was all occurring with Brydie, I made the decision to quit my part-time job as an environmental consultant and become a full-time animal communicator. I already understood and accepted that my dog could read my thoughts and feelings. What took me longer to comprehend was the fact that Brydie was actually reflecting or mirroring aspects of my own persona back to me by her unwelcome behavior. Eventually, in order to remedy Brydie’s aggression, I had to face my part in creating it. She not only mirrored my fear and apprehension, but she showed me some subtle truths that ran as unnoticed undercurrents in the situation.

For instance, if I had not jumped to conclusions, refused to get help, and decided that all hope was lost, Brydie and I would not have spent six months in dog-walk hell. The situation with Brydie became a crisis because of how I chose to react, and upon closer examination, I realized this was how I unconsciously reacted to many of life’s challenges. In time, of course, I identified how my experiences growing up led to that kind of knee-jerk reaction in me, and I had to forgive myself for not being perfect. What was really fascinating, though, was how the situation with Brydie exposed this syndrome to the open air so that I could work to heal and change my outmoded crisis-response thinking. In particular, Brydie’s behavior revealed my own ambivalence toward and mistrust of other dog owners. In the past, I had had a few bad encounters with dogs attacking my dogs, and I unconsciously assumed that the threat of aggressive dogs and irresponsible dog owners was universal. In fact, in the neighborhood where I lived with Brydie, this was a relatively minor issue. Internally, I anticipated problems, conflict, and difficulty from other dogs and dog owners. What Brydie was actually doing by attacking other dogs was demonstrating for me all the negative feelings and thoughts that were churning away undiscovered, not inside her, but inside me!

My Animal My Self charts new territory in the world of human and animal relationships. It shows you in detail how mirroring between animals and people happens. By mirroring I don’t mean behavioral mirroring that occurs when an animal copies a movement or sound made by a human, and I’m not referring to an animal reacting to the signals put out by a person’s body language. Rather, I’m talking about the kind of mirroring Brydie did with me. She was not only reading my body language; she could feel my fear and apprehension and actually see my mental pictures as I imagined her attacking another dog.

The field of animal communication is based on the assumption that it is possible for you and your animal to communicate intuitively by picking up each other’s thoughts, feelings, experiences, and mental images. Animals are the masters of this skill. I am an animal communicator by profession, which means I communicate this way with animals every day. I have written three books about this subject, and each book helps you understand how animal communication works and gives you instructions and exercises for doing it yourself. In each book I also go into detail about how you can know when communication is real and valid, and I give lots of examples, in the form of stories, of how people have discovered for themselves that it is authentic. I have proven to myself without a doubt that animal communication is possible, and I have taught thousands of people this skill, so I know it is something that everyone can master with good instruction and a little practice.